Kenya coast secessionists play on fear of outsiders - the wabara
Randu Nzai Ruwa, leader of the Mombasa Republican Council, claims the
region's people don't share in jobs, land or resources
* Clar Ni Chonghaile
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/clar-ni-chonghaile> in Mombasa
* <
http://www.guardian.co.uk> guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 September
2012 13.45 BST
Randu Nzai Ruwa is no stereotypical revolutionary. But the soft-spoken
carpenter has a radical idea - he wants independence for
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/kenya> Kenya's Indian Ocean coast, a
paradise for visitors where locals live in poverty.
Ruwa is the leader of the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC), a secessionist
group outlawed by the Kenyan government in 2010 but unbanned by the courts
in July.
He says the government is neglecting the region, and complains that jobs,
land and resources go to outsiders from the rest of Kenya, known as wabara.
"We have been made slaves in our own land," Ruwa says in a scruffy, noisy
room in Mombasa, the country's second-largest city.
The movement is just the latest - in a continent splintered by separatist
disputes, some longstanding, others more recent - to challenge the
notoriously arbitrary borders drawn by European colonisers in the 1880s with
little regard for ethnicity, culture and religion.
>From western Sahara and Casamance in west
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa> Africa to Puntland in Somalia and
Matabeleland in Zimbabwe, Africa has more than 20 independence movements,
some of which will have been encouraged by the recent experience of South
Sudan, which broke away from Sudan last year.
In post-Gaddafi Libya, the east around Benghazi is notably restive. Ethiopia
has two long-running separatist movements in Ogaden and Oromia. Zanzibar,
merged with Tanganyika almost 50 years ago into Tanzania, is now hearing
Islamists call for a referendum on ending the union.
Portrayed as a palm-fringed paradise in tourist brochures, Kenya's coast
suffers from crippling poverty and unemployment. The region's wealth
exacerbates frustrations: tourist resorts bring in millions of dollars each
year and Mombasa's port is the gateway to east Africa for goods from around
the world.
Mombasa and the surrounding region have
<
http://www.mombasainfo.com/about-mombasa/history-culture/history-of-mombasa
/> a distinct heritage garnered from centuries of Arab trade and influence -
the pungent smell of the spices traded centuries ago still perfume the Old
Town's narrow winding streets.
The Portuguese dominated the region for about 200 years from the late 15th
century, before they were overthrown by the Omani Arabs, who then ceded
control of the region to the British.
The
<
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mombasa-Republican-Council-MRC/1485081952208
35> council, which says it has more than 2 million members, argues that the
British protectorate should never have been integrated into Kenya at
independence. Its Kiswahili slogan is "Pwani si Kenya" ("the coast is not
Kenya").
Ruwa believes the Mombasa region has a strong case for independence, backed
by historical documents. Kenyan authorities say the documents are false.
Although most analysts believe secession will never happen, they say Ruwa's
movement could play a significant role as Kenya prepares for elections next
March, five years after around 1,200 people were killed
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/28/kenya.international> in tribal
violence after a disputed poll.
The organisation wants its supporters to boycott the March vote, and Ruwa
says many of its people are losing patience. "It is like a time bomb," he
said. "All the youth want to fight with the government . We are just cooling
them down."
Suleiman Shahbal, a businessman campaigning for election as Mombasa's
governor, acknowledges the appeal of independence. "A lot of people at the
coast feel the electoral process has failed us . That has led to the
frustration that you are now seeing epitomised by the MRC," he said.
One of the most festering issues is land. Much of the best property at the
coast is owned by people from other parts of Kenya - a result, the MRC says,
of land-grabbing by Kenya's first president after independence, Jomo
Kenyatta. The group says even the jobs created by the wabara, go to wabara.
Kenyan officials have linked the separatists to militant groups such as
Somalia's Islamist al-Shabaab. But Ruwa denies the allegations and a
November 2011
<
http://www.kecosce.org/downloads/MRC_Conflict_Assessment_Threats_and_Opport
unities_for_Engagement.pdf> study of the movement (pdf), by a researcher,
Paul Goldsmith, found no evidence of an official armed wing - yet.
"The MRC is not armed but could easily become so in the future," Goldsmith
wrote, adding there were reports of some units undergoing rudimentary
military-style training.
He also said some of the wabara were reportedly arming themselves. "The
potential for violence, however, should be viewed as largely independent of
the MRC campaign . engaging the MRC is arguably one of the best
opportunities for preventing bloodshed on the coast."
In Mombasa, tensions are already rising. Take Ali, who is sitting in the
shade in the middle of a Mombasa day, killing time because he has no job.
"There are so many people around the coast, especially the tribes of the
coast, who are jobless," he said, declaring his support for independence.
"If you have 90% jobless, what's next? It's war."
Received on Fri Sep 07 2012 - 10:34:38 EDT
